IEWS Before the Wind: The Memof purchas ing a "mermaid " (a oir of an American Sea CapJapanese taxid ermist's hoax) tain, 1808- 1833, by C harles worth the price of the book. Tyng, edited by Susan Fels W. J EFFREY BOLSTER (Viking,NewYorkNY, 1999, Barrington, New Hampshire THE 256pp, illus, index, notes, ISBN This review, excerpted with the 0-670-88632-7; $24.95hc) author's permission, originally :WIND For all its at traction from appeared in T he New Yo rk /,\",,\' /,j'.'/ 7 the beach, the sea remains unT imes Book Review. inhabi red and untamed to this day, cruelly indifferent to huNavies in History, by Clark man exertion .No wonder that G. Reynolds (Naval Institute American national mythology Press, Annapolis MD, 1998, makes" the frontier" synonymous with " the 28 0pp, illus, maps, appen, biblio, index, West." The West could be wo n. ISBN 1-55 75 0-7 16-3; $35 h c; ISBN 1Yet in the early years of the American 5575 0-7 15-5; $24.95 pb) republic the everyday frontier stretched Clark Reynolds, founder of the No rth eamvard, beyond the Atlantic horizo n. American Society fo r Oceanic Histo1y and Sailors were the second larges t occupational author of an impressive ar ray of works on gro up in the nation , next only to farmers , naval history, has undertaken a monumenand Canton and Rotterdam were more tal task in this compact but sweeping refamiliar to most than any Western terri- view of the rise and fall of national navies, to1y. Hundreds of thousands of Americans from 2000 BC up to the 1990s. T he resultfollowed the sea. Struggling against foreign ing study provides an excellent introducadversaries, the vagaries of the market and tion for the n ewcomer to this field and an the unpredictable ocean, they made them- accurate, insightful orientation to those selves and America on the eastern frontier. who (like most scholars, in fact) have only Tyng's Before the Wind rings with au- a dim notion of what was happening outthenticity and nerve. It movingly recon- side their areas of special interest. structs his boyhood initiation in to the lights Reynolds's broad viewpo int offers new and shadows of a sailor's life o n a voyage perspectives on subj ects with which one from Boston to C hina, then takes him may be familiar, seen in a new context. For through the sleeplessness and responsibil- this reader the recovery of Athens after the ity of co mmand. During his years afloat, he Peloponnesian War in the 400s BC showed faced pirates in Malaysia and the Carib- just what had been lost in the way of spirit bean, survived an attempt on his life by a and purpose in that ultimately des tructive shipmate and spent years in foreign ports war. As Reynolds succinctly describes it, of call-securing his fortune, and even "Athens rebounded from its defeat to elimimeeting Lord Byro n in Italy. Newly redis- nate Spana at sea and embroil the Aegean in covered and edi red by his great-great-grand- a series of revo lts and wars"-a comeback of daughter, Tyng's lyrical memoir is a tes ti- sorts, bur a sad comedown from the Periclean monial to an ambitious but likable man vision of a just society, or th e Athenian w ith a penchant for the unusual. Tyng not mission in fostering human achi evement. o nly went aro und the wo rld, he also went Reynolds puts forth some thought-prointo it wholeheartedly. A novelist's eye for voking summaries of major developments d etail and a storyteller's flair make this ya rn in civilization linked to naval realities. On the fall of Rome and th e Pax Romana a page-turner. Tyng w rites with the confident fo rce- which bound the Mediterranean wo rld fu lness that saved him countless times at together, bringing about a cu ltural dark sea, ye t with the open-eyed wo nder of a age, he comments: "Navies had fi gured child. Occasionally brash and righteous, he prominently in the rise ofWestern civilizadisplays a co ntagious fascination for street tion, protecting trade and ensuring the life in C hina, artwo rk at the Louvre and international order essential to urban culPatagonian penguins, among many other tures." Would that more land bound histothings. C ircumspect only about sex and rians shared that perspective! carousing, Tyng is a valuable info rmant for Reynolds goes on to trace the rise of the historians, and many will find his acco unt Ita lian city-sta tes which rev ived Western
SEA HISTORY 90, AUTUMN 1999
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